Family Tree Options

[david123]

Next week (21st March) we are off to the Forest of Dean for a week’s holiday. Caroline my wife has been working on her family tree for the last two or three years. The Forest of Dean is where her ancestors lived their lives, and we are off to put substance to lines of ink and death certificates. We went there years ago but had no idea that she had links to the area. I think it is going to be an interesting ride.

My daughter has managed to trace our family back to 1605, but unfortunately we have no blue blood running through our veins. It is amazing what a trawl through the archives brings up. Unbelievable as it may seem, it turns out that a friend that I have been sailing with for the last 15 years is my cousin. Now that is another story
I suspect quite a few of you are following a similar path. It would be wonderful to hear your stories.

[Crotchetymum]

David, I hope you have a lovely time there - it will probably feel quite different knowing that your wife's ancestors walked the same roads and saw the same views. Are you hoping to find certain addresses?

I've had a great deal of fun doing my family history. I started in about 1990 and have picked it up or left it over the years depending on work, children etc. We're a humble lot, rarely appearing as anything other than agricultural labourers or fishermen, but every now and again I find something that thrills me - a London cabby, a soldier, a quick trip to the US in the mid-1800s (why? trial emigration? worse....?), an unexpected strand coming from Devon - of little interest to anyone else but fascinating to us. We had some terrifically brave lifeboatemen and coastguards, and our fair share of 'paupers' in and out of the workhouse, and when it's your own family it gives a far more intense and personal view into life in the 18th and 19th centuries. The frustrating thing is that there are questions that can never be answered - why people migrated from one part of the country to another, what happened to certain people.... I was lucky that a huge number of mine were born and bred in Kent (apart from the occasional interloper (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)) and I had the archives at the Cathedral on my doorstep, though they're off soon, to Maidstone. It also means that I'm probably related to half of the Kentish coast-dwellers!

My biggest moan - why were they all called Richard, William, Elizabeth and Mary? Couldn't they have thought about us, their descendants, trying to work out who is who? It's so much easier to track the unusual names. My best to trace so far have been - Keturah, Priscilla, Moses and Delos Boaz (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[upbeat]

Tracing your family tree back to 1605 is fantastic. I'm currently stuck in the early 1800s with the main branch of tree I want to follow. My relatives inconveniently moved just before the 1841 census which makes it hard to trace their birthplaces (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

We also visited the village where a lot of my ancestors are from and that is what really sparked off my interest in the family tree. It really brought it to life for me. Hope your visit to the Forest of Dean is equally enjoyable.

[fsharpminor]

I have a tree going back to 1685. However a complicating factor is that my surname is not what it should be, as my Grandfather had a major bust up with his father in about 1909-10 when he was about 30. He renounced the family name and took his mothers maiden name, which is the name we now use and is fairly unusual. The line I traced back is therefore taht name going backwards from my Great Grandmother, not down the male line which would have been harder because its so common (Taylor). I've managed a part of that line. But both lines are from the region between Hull and Beverley and surrounding villages. Most weirdly the current Rector who looks after some of those village parishes has the same name as me, but we can't trace any connection!
I also can go back a long way on my mothers side.

[Maizie]

My brother-in-law is tracing my husband's family tree. Though ironically the surname they have is that of the man their mother was married to, who is not their father (which both boys and father were unaware of until 15-or-so years after they were born) So he's sort-of bemused at himself that he's putting in all this effort for people who technically aren't actually relatives (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) But he is really enjoying it, and he bumped in to someone on GenesReUnited who links in to the chart he was doing, so that got him back a few hundred more years (I think he's at early-17-something at the moment).
But it turns out we are pretty local to where we are now, mostly. If you put my name in Google, one of the things that comes up pretty high in the list is that there is a gravestone with that name on from 1684 in the next town up the road - it's pretty much guaranteed that's family. Well, I've only married in to this family, and like I say it's not actually my husband's blood-family. Mind you, in years to come nobody would probably know who was or wasn't legitimate in the tree...I'd be amused if turned out this sort of thing had happened however many hundred years ago and the tree he's tracking down is doubly-not-ours (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

A work colleague was saying it's the sort of thing that he imagined would be very interesting to do, so we said why didn't he do his, to which he replied 'One of my uncles is a historian, and he's got it referenced back to when we came across in the Norman Conquest' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif)

[Babybird2]

Someone in Holland (where my Dad is from) has traced our family back to one man in the 1630s. We only found out about it when my Dad typed his sister's name into google and this page came up with all our names on (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

I'm not even sure what relation this person is who has created the list - I need a big piece of paper to draw it on. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blush.gif)

[Ayshah]

My biggest moan - why were they all called Richard, William, Elizabeth and Mary? Couldn't they have thought about us, their descendants, trying to work out who is who? It's so much easier to track the unusual names. My best to trace so far have been - Keturah, Priscilla, Moses and Delos Boaz (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Hmm or they named their kids after a sibling, or they have one thing on their birth certs but are called something totally different! Or weird things like adopting the servants girl's baby - then you find out the child has been fathered by the husband! Or in one case a sister couldnt have kids so 'unofficially' adopted one of her neices...! Secrets come tumbling out...

[false_harmonic]

One of my relatives years ago researched our family tree on my paternal grandfather's side. They managed to trace it back to 1758, which I thought was rather exciting, and I remember as a child spending hours and hours pouring over it. Even though I did not know any of the people further back than my grandpa's generation, it was still fascinating just to see the names. It was probably made a little easier by the fact that the surnames on my grandpa's side were a little unusual.

[jod]

I'm tracing our family tree too, but with Smiths in it, it is going to be tricky!

I haven't had much success inputting data recently as I've been busy cat nursing.

The only way it is going to work is to get maiden names of the non-Smiths!

I've only really just started, but I've managed to get 5 generations back so far.

I'm doing this for my son. I believe an Uncle has done much of the Debenham work for me, but I've got to do the Smith work.

Even now there have been skeletons, which have amused me rather than been sad, like a superstitious Great grandmother who always celebrated her birthday a week early as she was born on the 13th of the month!

I have an inkling from work my father's father did in the 1970s, but had been destroyed that there is a lot of illigitemy on his side. However given that in the 17th and 18th Century the amount of stuff carrying on between gentry and servants was rife, that does not really come as a huge shock!

[fsharpminor]

I'm tracing our family tree too, but with Smiths in it, it is going to be tricky!

Even now there have been skeletons, which have amused me rather than been sad, like a superstitious Great grandmother who always celebrated her birthday a week early as she was born on the 13th of the month!

Now there's a thought !! But it's my daughters birthday also today !! so 13th is lucky for me.
(sorry red herring !)

[Ayshah]

When you find that they have "another family" usually living not very far away! My great grandfather had 12 living children with my great grandmother, then had another 2 with a 'lady' around the corner. And his father, my g g grand dad had two illegitimate children with his servant then married a woman 20 years younger than him and had another five! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

One of my elderly employers remembers when she was about 10 a well dressed young man turned up at her parents house and it turned out to have been her respectable church going father's son from a previous marriage which his current six children had no idea about. Turned out that her parents had "run away" to London from the midlands. Her father had simply walked out on his first wife, (as it was difficult to get a divorce then), with her mother who was some 20 years younger than him! None of their kids had a clue that their parents werent married, they had just settled down in London as Mr and Mrs x, and her father was something or other in the church! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)

Skeletons!! Luv them makes history far more interesting!